Startup Talk

Discover the world of entrepreneurs! Organized by NIT and Startup Dock and held every semester, Startup Talk presents successful entrepreneurs, business angels and startup experts. All lessons are held in English and conclude with your chance to connect with speakers, fellow students and entrepreneurs.

Summer Semester 2016

Hamburg is Germany's e-mobility capital. Spend one sunny day in the city and you will see people driving electric cars and riding battery-powered bikes, scooters and skateboards. You might also catch sight of a surfer racing over the Elbe on a 55 km/h fast carbon jet board from Lampuga, a young Hamburg startup.

Lampuga was founded by former investment banker and Hamburg native Benjamin Köhnsen in late 2008. His idea was to create a surfboard that can be used without wind and waves. Today, Lampuga is the world's leading electric jetboard company with a distribution network that spans over four continents.

On June 9, Lampuga founders Benjamin Köhnsen (CEO) and Marc Hammerla (COO) will share interesting and funny stories about their journey and will give tips on how to ride and scale fast.

Winter Semester 2015/2016

C++, Swift, Pascal, Python or Java – there are multiple ways and languages to create computer programs. But just like learning English or Mandarin, learning to code is a lot easier when your are still young. As young as the girls at App Camps’ Summer Camp 2015, for example. The camp was a big success and since then App Camps, a non-profit social business from Hamburg, is getting more and more attention for their efforts to teach kids how to code. Their main focus thereby lies on socially disadvantaged students and other underrepresented groups.

Dr. Diana Knodel, founder of App Camps was recently rewarded for her activities by the German federal ministry BMWiE with an award for her “initiative in education for young persons”. Besides App Camps, she currently is an ambassador for Hamburg Geekettes and also active for Digital Media Women (#DMW).
For the first Startup Talk in 2016, she will be joined by the second founder of App Camps, her husband Philipp Knodel. Both successful founders share the desire to fascinate children for IT and teach them how to code. During their talk at the NIT Hamburg, they will try to create the same passion among the audience, namely to transform an own idea into a social entrepreneurship project.www.appcamps.de

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ralf Otterpohl is Head of the Institute for Wastewater Management and Water Protection at Hamburg Technical University (TUHH). He certainly knows all about starting a business, especially when it comes to his favorite green, sustainable and non-profit projects:

"I strongly support starting up a business, especially if it is beneficial for all and for the environment! However, to make it successful, you should know from real life about traps, tricks, well-dressed criminals and how to keep cool [while] meeting billionaires. It is highly addictive to expect a few millions right next week and there are many smart people around founders who make you believe in such stories. It becomes boring after a few years, though. I have learned that building from a good base with realistic steps has a lot of upsides and is often successful in the long run."

Piiiiiieep. People with tinnitus are hearing this sound 24 hours a day – while trying to sleep, watching TV or listening to music. However, when it comes to music there now is a solution for patients towards the unrelieved pleasure of clear sounds.

Tinnitracks filters patients' individual tinnitus frequencies from their favorite music and thus renders it suitable for a clinically validated treatment. Behind Tinnitracks stands the Sonormed GmbH based in Hamburg, a manifold awarded for their digital medical product for the neuro-acoustic treatment of tinnitus.
During their Startup Talk, co-founder of Sonormed/Tinnitracks Adrian Nötzel and lawyer Moritz Diekmann are going to talk about their main challenges and experiences while founding a company in the digital medical sector. Please note that for the first time the Startup Talk takes place north of the Elbe, namely in the main building of the Bucerius Law School in room 2.21 and begins at 6 p.m. (s.t.).
Afterwards, there will be free drinks and networking. www.tinnitracks.com

Why complicate when it can be simple! A motto that became the base of the business plan of Auerbach Marine. Founded in 2010, the founders made cargo shipping the center of their activities. Customers have become co-owners and the growing fleet quickly matured into a major partner in the international transportation and movement of goods.

In an industry that is sometimes characterized by troubled waters, a young shipping company goes its own way towards growth. But what does Auerbach differently than their competitors? What is the market perception of experts? What future strategy follows Auerbach? www.auerbach-schifffahrt.de

Summer Semester 2015

Dr. Annette Eckhardt: "XtalConcepts: from a garage into the world – high-tech made in Hamburg."CEO XtalConcepts GmbHFlyer

Hubertus Bessau: "mymuesli: How to turn an online startup into a multi-channel company."Founder & CMO mymuesliFlyer

Winter Semester 2014/2015

Christoph Jung was the CEO and founder of Massivkonzept, a leading e-commerce site selling customized furniture. In 2013, Jung sold Massivkonzept after three years to Fab.com for a price of € 20 million. After that Jung founded the mycs GmbH, an upcoming online shop offering high-quality but affordable furniture that can be personalized online with no waiting time. He also worked for McKinsey as a management consultant and is a “home-grown talent” – being a NIT/TUHH graduate in Technology Management (MBA) and Mechatronics (Master’s).

“Driving Urban Liberty” – that is the claim of Walberg Urban Electrics. Founded in 2012 by Florian Walberg, Walberg Urban Electrics creates products for urban mobility such as the Egret, a small and foldable electric scooter. CEO Walberg and his team see themselves as vehicle manufacturers with high-quality German engineering, efficient service and innovative products, in which intuitive handling and riding fun take precedence. Before starting his own business, Walberg had worked many years in the development and production team for a manufacturer of electric scooters.

Catharina van Delden is the CEO and founder of innosabi. Based in Munich, innosabi provides software and services for collarborative innovation management and crowdsourcing. With the help of their software customers can participate in the innovation processes and product development of big-name companies, such as Edeka, Ford and the German drugstore chain dm. Innosabi’s team has received many awards, e.g. just this year van Delden became one of “Deutschlands Digitale Köpfe”, a prize by the German Informatics Society (GI) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). She is an MBA graduate of TU Munich and UC Berkeley.

Making people independent in the digital age – that’s the proclaimed aim of Protonet. The Hamburg-based company builds personal servers for small businesses, households and other groups. The social operating system Protonet SOUL covers the main functions of a group network: communication, file management, knowledge management and project management. Thomas Reimers, CMO of Protonet, simply declares it the “easiest server in the world”. He also characterizes himself as an “die-hard entrepreneur and adventurous marketer”. He owns a master’s degree in Management & Entrepreneurship from Leuphana University Lüneburg.